TV SERIES · 1968– · ITALY
Odissea
14 archived facts 5 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
All facts (14)
- #001
Mario Bava directed the episodes featuring Polyphemus and the Cyclops, while Piero Schivazappa directed the episodes featuring the Trojan Horse.
- #002
According to the official Rai Cultura website, director Franco Rossi deliberately cast actors who were largely unknown to the public, with the exception of Irene Papas.
- #003
In its original broadcast, the first episode was watched by 14.5 million Italians. On average, each episode drew 16.6 million Italian viewers, which was more than one in three citizens according to the 1971 census. After the series ended, Italian viewers gave it an 88% approval rating. [Sources: Télé 7 Jours magazine, Radiocorriere TV 1968].
- #004
A Thomas organ featured prominently in the soundtrack to create special musical effects.
- #005
According to the official Rai Cultura website, this was the first Rai TV production shot on colour film. Although Rai TV did not begin colour broadcasting until 1977 (nine years later), the production was made on colour film because it was intended for international distribution.
- #006
According to the official Rai Cultura website and the French magazine Télé 7 Jours, director Franco Rossi and executive producer Vittorio Bonicelli tried to reconstruct as authentic a historical setting as possible for the Ithaca scenes involving Penelope, her suitors and Odysseus's return. To that end, a Mycenaean Greek village based on Late Bronze Age excavations was built on the Yugoslav coast, the main filming location. For the more fantastical returns, they let their imaginations run free, relying on various locations and sources. As classical author Fernando Lillo Redonet suggests, this is especially evident in the Felliniesque scene in which Odysseus visits a highly surreal, theatrical god Aeolus.
- #007
According to the official Rai Cultura website, each episode was originally introduced by the famous Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti reading some lines from Homer's epic. Investigations conducted in 2011 with DVD publisher Rai and even with Ungaretti's daughter, and posted on Facebook, revealed that these segments had been lost by Rai and could therefore no longer be recovered.
- #008
Filming the scene featuring the Cyclops Polyphemus took two months. In the studio, two identical caves of different sizes were built to suggest the very different heights of the giant and of Odysseus and his companions. There were two matching sets. Carlo Rambaldi, who went on to create the creatures for Alien (1979) and E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), made six single-eyed face masks for the Cyclops until a satisfactory model was achieved. Samson Burke trained for a month to open and close his eye with electrical wires attached to his arms. A huge two-metre mechanical arm was also built to lift the actors playing his victims. [Source: Télé 7 Jours magazine and a 1975 Rai TV interview with Rambaldi and Mario Bava].
- #009
Executive producer/screenwriter Vittorio Bonicelli initially wanted to film the Iliad, another work by Homer, but realised it was too complex for a TV series. Producer Dino De Laurentiis persuaded him to take on The Odyssey. [Source: Télé 7 Jours magazine].
- #010
Because of all the Italian, Yugoslav, English-speaking, French and German actors on set, the crew tried to communicate in English, but in the end the scripts had to be prepared in all the main languages. [Source: Télé 7 Jours magazine].
- #011
According to the French magazine Télé 7 Jours, the series required two years of preparation, eight months of filming and three months of dubbing. During filming, the size of the crew varied between one hundred and two hundred people. Twenty-seven tailors and shoemakers were permanently on set to make and repair the costumes. Three replicas of ancient Greek ships were built from a simple keeled hull based on archaeological plans, a task that took a team of master carpenters several months. Odysseus's ship alone cost more than 20 million lire (32,000 US dollars at the time). A motor was hidden inside the ship to make it easier to navigate.
- #012
According to the French magazine Télé 7 Jours, the series had a total budget of 8.4 million French francs, equivalent at the time to about 1 billion Italian lire, or 1.7 million US dollars.
- #013
The striking Egyptian eye makeup worn by Scilla Gabel in the role of Helen of Troy is drawn from various passages in Book IV of Homer's Odyssey. When Telemachus meets King Menelaus and his wife Helen in Sparta, the text relates that the couple spent considerable time in Egypt after the Trojan War, where the wealthy king of Thebes, Polybus, and his wife Alcandra gave them many precious gifts that are now displayed in Menelaus's palace. Later in that Book, it is noted that Helen brought with her from Egypt, a land of many skilled physicians, powerful drugs she used to make her guests forget all their sorrows. [Based on Martin M. Winkler, Three Queens: Helen, Penelope and Dido in Franco Rossi's Odissea and Eneide.].
- #014
When Telemachus meets King Menelaus and his wife Helen (in the third episode of the Italian series, but already in the first episode of the French dub), there is none of the festivity of the couple's wedding or of the "Zeus-like" splendour of their palace as Homer describes it in Book IV. Instead, Menelaus here lives in a plain, domed, tomb-like room based on the Bronze Age tholos excavated at Mycenae in Greece, popularly known as the Treasury of Atreus or the Tomb of Agamemnon. The gloomy mood is further emphasised by the fact that Menelaus has his death mask made, a copy of the golden "Mask of Agamemnon" discovered by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae in 1876 and previously shown in the introduction to the first episode. Moreover, the armour of Menelaus's murdered brother Agamemnon is visible in the background. [Based on Martin M. Winkler, Three Queens: Helen, Penelope and Dido in Franco Rossi's Odissea and Eneide.].
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